Nathan Hoback, a HISP alum (’10) who went on to pursue an M.A. with the School of Education at W&M, has recently been distinguished as Matoaca High School Teacher of the Year 2016.
A native of Roanoke, Nathan has been a member of the Matoaca High School faculty for five years, where he currently teaches Spanish 1 and Algebra II. Susan Hester, Chair of the World Languages Department, says, “He is a fantastic teacher! He engages the whole student beyond just the academics; supporting them outside the classroom in the extracurricular activities and cultural events. He is truly a model example of an enthusiastic instructor. It is awesome to have him at Matoaca High School.”
While at the College, Nathan was part of a group of students who, with the mentorship of Prof. Francie Cate-Arries and with the auspices of a Mellon grant, spent spring break of 2009 visiting sites of memory in Spain and meeting with survivors of the Spanish Civil War. The research team produced a website, Mapping Memory in Madrid, which includes a map and a description of Madrid’s sites of memory, documents from the era, and profiles and testimonies from survivors of the dictatorship. Nathan also wrote an honors thesis, “Hooray for Hollywood”: Postwar Cinema and Trauma in Franco’s Dictatorship in Spain, on the use of Spanish films to spread a Francoist version of the civil war, glorifying the Nationalists and demonizing the Republicans, and US films that, while censored, provided audiences with opportunities to resist the repressive Franco regime. Some of his findings were published in The Monitor as “A Hollywood Haunting of Spain: Raza (1942), Rebecca (1940), and Commemoration of the Spanish Civil War” (Winter 2010 [6.1]).